Films, television adaptations, societies, tours, conferences, tea towels and now Paris Hilton . . . the “Austen brand” is so broad and self-sustaining that it is easy to forget that it is built on just six-and-a-bit novels.

That branding started in 1913, when Sybil G. Brinton, an author of towering obscurity, wrote and published what is thought to be the first example of “fan-fiction”. Her Old Friends and New Fancies, which has just been republished in Britain, blazed the trail for an estimated 700 novels and stories that now owe their existence to Jane Austen’s